Like Andrew Bartlett, I agree entirely with Andrew Bolt regarding the shameful weaseling by the International Olympic Committee regarding the whole idea of granting the 2008 games to the authoritarian dictatorship of China in the first place.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out in comments that LP has not discussed the Rudd government’s continued determination to introduce ISP-level internet filtering this week. To redress that lack I’ll quote a post I made at Hoyden About Town a couple of days ago in its entirety below:
No surprises: internet filtering test results show products block legitimate content
We said it would. Despite a cheery press release from Communications Minister Stephen Conroy that all is going well, an analysis of the actual test results shows that the tested filters slow connection speeds significantly (which means ISPs would have to increase capacity, the costs of which would be passed on to consumers) and have a false positives rate that would block at least 10,000 legitimate sites (and that’s for the best product result - most would block more). It gets worse:
None of the products could effectively filter instant messaging, streaming video, peer-to-peer file sharing like BitTorrent, newsgroups or newly-invented Internet protocols except by blocking them entirely. Let’s count them again. None.
How long will the Rudd government continue to pretend that having this cumbersome, costly and ineffective product shoved at us under an opt-out scheme is in any way a good idea?
Agreeing with Andrew Bolt? My God! The world has turned upside down. The Olympics have always been shamefully corrupt. This is just another example. I know I won’t be taking any interest in the whole mess. But I hope Cadel Evans wears his ‘Free Tibet’ socks.
The IOC is a massive scam, anyone want to bet a bit of “Salt lake city” helped China secure the games?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympic_bid_scandal
Its wiki but its an easy read for those whove forgotten or never heard about it…
I’m surprised that anybody expected otherwise. Anyway I can’t see that it matters much that reporters from outside china can’t access a bunch of sites. They can access the sites back home prior and after the games. What matters is that chinese people can’t access the sites.
A couple of months ago I was in Beijing and at one hotelowned by the Autonomous Peoples Region of Mongolia the net access was expensive - about au$3 for 30 minutes and slow and obviously blocked from a bunchof things. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it wasn’t electronically monitored. The mostly empty net room had two fulltime “helpers” in it. I suspect they were monitoring what people accessed in real time although they had no IT skills to think of when help was needed. I sneakily checked their screens a few times - they had multiple windows open with at least half the windows on chat and networking sites with the usual quota of Hello Kitty graphics. I suspect the other screens were my activities.
I spent a week in a sort of B&B in a traditional hutong house /compound. Net access there was fast broadband, donation of au$1 an hour and I didn’t find anything I could not access at all.
Poor Kevvie G
His reputation people! Yes, it’s all about Kevvie, that patrician paragon of probity. I could go on about other individuals particularly that nice Mr Verbruggen but I know how litigious this mob are so I’ll cease and desist and let the BBC do some of it for me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7525072.stm
I share your shock and dismay Tigtog. To think that the coming of the globes finest sportspeople has failed to undermine totalitarianism is… well… unthinkable.
I can’t think it!
Correction FDB.
Its the Sport Commentators who bring freedom and democracy and co-ordinated jackets with logos.
In just two weeks of August 2008 these freedom fighters would have bought the communist regime to its knees. There are cynics who think that all we would have got was speculation about Lisa’s knee or new swimsuits for …. swimmers. But no these warriors of rights would have fixed it all.. …… if only they could google Falun Gong whilst in Beijing in that 2 weeks.
Bolt is spot on.
The whole Olympics, mind you, is shaping up as a bit of a disaster. My sense is that the general sports-watching public has little interest in it. Drugs, repression ans pollution are a big turnoff individually, but together they are toxic.
Im with FXH. What sort of eejits ever thought it would be otherwise?
Im quite certain my email was being scanned when I was in Beijing. But I was hardly ’surprised’. ‘Oh fie! It appears one’s freedoms, as enjoyed at home, are subject to entirely expected local constraints. Someone alert the media!”
Alternatively, Lefty E, your headline might read “Visitors To World’s Longest Surviving Communist Country Unexpectedly Subjected To Communism”.
True. In which case, why did the IOC even bother with the big song and dance originally about how they’d come to this agreement with China (what a huge concession it was supposed to be) that journalists would not have their access to data restricted?
If they hadn’t bothered with that bit of theatre in the first place they wouldn’t have so much egg on their face now.
Of course: Bolt is the sort of populist dingbat who’d also cry “Sport and politics are different!” if an actual boycott was announced, and all our sunny little blond swimmers started crying about their wasted years.
If fact, if you listen v closely, you can almost hear him now - ra-raing the QLD coppers as they barged through the anti-Springbok protesters in 1972.
Hehe, I might nick that for BmL, Liam, con tu permiso….
I guess I haven’t followed it closely, largely because i find it hard to suspend reality like that: but I thought we’d all - as a society - complicity assumed that IOC stuff was complete bollocks from the get-go, Tigtog. Nod and wink to blind bat style. I know I did.
So Im not going to jump up and down now. Frankl, I suspect Ostraya wanted the IOC on that wall. That we cant handle the truth when it comes to sport, so they treat us like children - because we ask for it.
Por supuesto, Izquierdista.
Deep down in places I don’t like to talk about at parties, I do want to be an IOC delegate.
“ra-raing the QLD coppers as they barged through the anti-Springbok protesters in 1972.”
It was 1971.
Sure it is bad that a few hacks can’t view a few sites for the duration of the Olympics, but why are we so silent about our own government’s attempts to censor the internet? The results of the government’s laboratory tests were released earlier this week and ACMA is now looking for ISPs to help conduct field trials. Why are people so accustomed to barking at the media whistle?
And what about these folks?
http://corporate.olympics.com.au/index.cfm?p=44
How high would the heap of corpses have to be before corporate sponsors refused to have their logos on view when a koala-clutching moppet weeps to “Advance Australia Fair”?
The IOC are expert matchmakers between totalitarianism and the market.
I blogged it (especially the mismatch between the Minister’s “promising results” and the actual results) over at Hoyden, PDAA. Not sure why I didn’t crosspost it that day.
No problem, tigtog. Wasn’t having a go at anyone in particular, just a general WTF.
No worries, PDAA. It was a good point, and as it was a short heads-up type post I’ve now quoted it in its entirety as part of this post as well. It is a stinking pile of WTF indeed.
But we will be able to opt out……..won’t we? Tell me it’s so.
Chris Grealy
Yes but you will have to wear a scarlet “P” (for pervy) on your t-shirt when your out in public…its for the kiddies….so you know its a good idea….
Oh well, how unsurprising. China censors the net. Shock horror.
I’m soooooo over the Olympics. I endured them in Sydney and have been deranged about them ever since. I’ve got no idea why people would think the Olympics would bring freedom of speech to China, when it didn’t even solve Sydney’s public transport debacles.
Perhaps they’ll have a wonderful opening ceremony? Not that I’ll be watching.
Yes, as ‘big events’ empirically tend to bring restrictions on democratic freedoms in western societies (think Grand Prix, The Pope, WTO), I cant for the life of me imagine what anyone was thinking would happen in China.
They should be grateful if they haven’t made repression worse there. Of course, they probably have. But that seems to be par for the course.
LP now blocked in China, no doubt. Wear your blocking with pride!
Dubious Debus & McLaLaLand present when it comes to transparency & evidence based blah blah…the 1890’s lead time is…appropriate.
AFP won’t release Haneef documents: Keelty
‘despite calls from the Federal Attorney-General to do so…(the) AFP could not release its submission without the permission of British police.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/01/2321714.htm?section=justin
Censorship…:)
Will the Chinese get fined for being annoying?
LOL
“He’s telling Mr McClelland to get stuffed … That’s exactly what he’s done,” said Dr Haneef’s lawyer, Rod Hodgson.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/afp-rejects-haneef-request-20080801-3omg.html
Gosh.
How does one opt out of Rudd’s censhorship of the Internet. I’m not interested in porn,(because of my cancer treatment I’ve a very low libido as I’m shot up with oestregen every three months) but I do want to access everything else.
What’s the money on this internet censorship creating such a massive outcry because of slow speeds and non-porn sites being blocked that Krudd will have to back down?
To any CCCP readers monitoring us for anti-Chinese statements, take a leaf out of our “democratic” PM’s book. People will get so bored with waiting to download they’ll give up.
Or better still, convert to Xanity. They’ve got it all over you Coms when it comes to censorship.
I actually think Bolt is quite a talented writer, so its nice to occasionally have him on our side. (Although I don’t really expect China to dominate the next century)
In regard to Gosper, I seem to be the only one saying it, so I’ll keep going until someone notices. For the last decade prior to the collapse of Apartheid the one thing that stood between South Africa and democracy was Shell. A mere threat to abandon their running of the UN Sanctions program would have brought the South African government to its knees, or at least the bargaining table.
Gosper was only head of Shell Asia Pacific, not the whole world, but he should be very glad the War Crimes tribunal’s ambit doesn’t cover corporate sponsors.
1,300,000,000 people to look after. They must be reasonably capable. They’re the stand out in attempting to control unsustainable population growth worldwide. Fifty years after actively serving to stop “The Yellow Hordes”, I’m still waiting. Yes repression is horrible and unacceptable but I don’t remember the ‘56 Games in Melbourne being dominated by our own repression of minorities.
I am reminded of the old Bob Hope joke (supposedly told on his first visit to the place) about how China was the only country in the world where your television set watches you.
Seriously though folks, did anyone really believe that the hosting the Olympics Games would change anything?
That was never going to to happen. The only thing that is going to change China is the Chinese people themselves doing something about it.
And so they will. Eventually.
I’d give the old farts running the show another decade or so before it blows-up in their faces.
Once the games begin, then that will be the main focus.
However, the IOC must be collectively considering to which cities they award games in the future. While it would be reasonable whatever the circumstances to expect it will be quite some time before Beijing got the Summer Games again, any other awarding of the games to China would now be a lot less palatable than it was in 2001.
Problems with the torch relay, internet access, athletes being effectively muzzled, and the bad-PR by association should make the IOC take into account these things in greater magnitude than it did when it awarded the games to Beijing. But I don’t trust them one little bit.
Thanks for the link, Katz.
Yep, Solzhenitsyn wrote some very good books; doesn’t mean everything he wrote or said was wonderful. Ditto Orwell. Ditto Germaine Greer. Ditto Charles Dickens.
We human apes do have a tendency to go into raptures and adore certain writers, do we not? I think the best antidote is to be on one’s guard. Stay critical.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of our times. People should have the right not to know. These beliefs of Solzhenitsyn’s remind me of the peace I felt working on Lilla Creek cattle station doing the bore run. Took a while to get used to the isolation but a calm settled in after a couple of weeks and all communication with the outside world ceased. Still manage to do a mini version most days during my mountain walks. But don’t you just love your poison? Gotta get that fix in, damn information, communication and this evil contraption. Just think- if my wife hadn’t gone home to Prague and made me learn to send an email I’d still be in the bliss of ignorance. Now no bliss just the ignorance. Sigh.